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Friday, January 2, 2015

#39 Willamette Session Ale - Recipe

With four days off for new years, I can't think of a better way to celebrate than by brewing more beer. Unfortunately after coming back from Christmas I don't have any yeast ready to go. That means I'll have to brew a small beer so I can use a yeast pack without making a starter. Most of the things I have on my to-brew list require a lot of yeast--pilsner, kolsch, IPA, vanilla bourbon porter--so I'll use this batch to build up a healthy pitch for that porter.

The recipe here is built around the grain bill I used in the session IPA I brewed this summer. The hops and malt flavors were both bold and tasty on their own, but didn't seem to fit well together. I basically scaled the malt bill up to 6 gallons (with the victory and carastan malts rounded up) so I could split it in half for two different yeasts. I want to try Wyeast 1450 Denny's Favorite 50 in the porter, and as always, I like to have a baseline when trying a new yeast, so I'll do the other half with good old Chico.

After that I'll throw in a bit of Willamete hops. Like Cascade, I'm not worried about Willamette overwhelming the beer. The earthy/citrusy mix should go well with the malt and yeast here, plus it gives me a chance to learn a bit about one hop on its own. I used just Willamette in the parti-gyle bitter and barleywine, but the bitter went quick and I still haven't bottled the barleywine, so it's good to take another look while I have a pound of the stuff.